The Stars Have Withered (SYOC)
by The Girl With Graffiti Skin
Summary: Twenty years ago, the prince was abducted from the castle by his uncle and the entire royal family slaughtered by rebels who crowned their own king. One year ago, the secret prince and his uncle drove the rebels and their false king from Angeles and reclaimed the throne. Now - the hidden prince has announced his Selection, to find his queen. Still open as of 17/08/16.
1. Chapter 1

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Tomorrow will be kinder.

"The tricky thing," Trajan was saying somewhere behind him, picking his way through the shattered chunks of concrete and fragments of broken glass that littered the ground. "Is that yesterday, you were just a child playing soldiers, dreaming dreams with happy endings."

Hadrian didn't respond for a long moment. He didn't think he could. It rather felt as though his tongue had turned to lead in his mouth, and his bones to concrete. He could tell without looking that black clouds had begun to gather behind him, visible in the still disrepaired hole left by dynamite in the eighth floor wall. "And now what am I?"

Often he wondered why each thread of thought within his mind ran towards the conclusion, hoping for an end, like he was wearing an armour of sorrow, weighing his shoulders down, trouble haunting his mind like a vulture perched precariously on one shoulder.

"Now?" His uncle was amused, a smile in his voice. The sound of metal, as he kicked a gun away from a corpse. Hadrien was glad that their soldiers had left them behind to speak in the ruins of the palace, that there were no witnesses to this moment. "Now you are restored to your rightful position." And Hadrian noticed that his uncle avoided saying exactly what that position was, but bit his lead tongue and allowed no such venomous words slip past his lips. This was a homecoming. This ought to have been joyful. So he stayed silent. "But now we've stepped into the world, and it's full of wolves and rats. Everybody is watching. Everybody is keeping score, Hadrian."

Another of Trajan's mantras. Even when they had hidden from the entire world, hidden from every last prying eye, somewhere anonymous and silent and secret, act as though everyone is watching. Hadrian heeded Trajan's words - they were less painful than making those mistakes for himself.

Every lesson formed a new scar. The last had left a knotted cicatrix over his heart where a pretty girl had tried to cut his heart out. The lesson: don't trust a beautiful girl, and don't trust your heart. One will always betray the other. What was love but a disease of the blood?

But he didn't think about that anymore.

"They never thought I'd make it this far," Hadrian said softly.

"They were foolish to doubt you," Trajan replied, setting a fatherly hand on his nephew's shoulder. "And they paid for their mistake with their lives."

"Most of them," Hadrian replied bitterly. A small cabal of rebels had escaped their onslaught in the midst of the royalist attack on their palace, fleeing even as their guards and ground soldiers ran towards their deaths.

"The country is ours again," Trajan said calmingly. "Let them run. They will not get far."

Hadrian hesitated. Turning on his heel and looking over the destruction that the rebels and royalists had wrought on the once glorious castle, the wreck and ruins that now lay across the ground as though discarded by some careless deity, he could not help but feel... lost. Wasn't this meant to be home? Wasn't this meant to be a homecoming?

And yet he had never known this palace. Not since he had been stolen from this world, a mere six months old, spirited away and enclosed within a more mundane reality, his identity - the one he assumed now, name and all - stripped from him and another put in its place, like a snake might shed its skin in spring. This was not - could not - be home.

Home was very far away from here.

"Ours," he repeated, rather distantly, and then there were footsteps behind them and Trajan turned to accept the salute of an approaching royalist rifleman, his uniform torn, one arm hanging useless at his side.

"Lord Regent, sir," the soldier gasped out. "Your Highness. We've found them. We've found them."

Trajan shot Hadrian a significant look. The teenager took a deep breath. He could be a teenager no longer.

He was a prince now. He might be a king soon. This country, this throne, was his. His birthright. Time for him to claim it.

"Show me," Prince Hadrian said.

Tomorrow would be kinder.

* * *

 **ONE YEAR LATER**

" _Come away, little lamb. Come away to the water, to the arms that are waiting only for you._ "

The new facade of the palace gleamed bronze and gold and amber in the late morning sunshine, the light leaking slowly like thick honey through a dense cloud cover of charcoal and slate. The long emerald lawns now laced with wildflowers led to the high walls and the permanently locked iron gates that hid the castle and its inhabitants from the rest of Angeles, from the rest of Illéa, from the rest of the world. After only a year, reconstruction of the once beautiful palace was nearly complete - and yet, would it ever be the same?

" _Come away, little lamb, come away to the slaughter, to the one appointed to see this through._ "

No king now, no queen either. Their headstones shone, white and black marble, tucked away in the small alcove beside the castle chapel that had belonged to their forefathers for as long as they had forefathers. Hadrien's younger sisters lay there now too.

" _We are calling for you. We are coming for you."_

Well, all but one.

"Do you know any songs that aren't dreadfully morbid?" Hadrian asked rhetorically as he approached the delicate ivory girl, who was standing on the end of the cobblestone path just as it began its gentle curve back towards the driveway.

Drosida was swishing her fencing foil through the air with a ferocity that was entirely unsuited to her delicate facial features, her bird-like frame and scorpion grass eyes. Her flaxen hair had been braided back in an arrangement that looked entirely too complex to be practical - nonetheless, Hadrian had to concede that despite her small size, his favourite and only cousin cut as imposing a figure in her padded jacket and _plastron_ as she had in her fatigues a year ago.

Had it only been a year? A year since they had retaken the castle, the throne and the nation? Hadrian's hair was beginning to grow too long again, curling where it touched his collar. The wound on Drosida's upper lip had healed to a thin silver scar, barely visible against her porcelain skin.

She showed very white and very sharp teeth when she smiled. "Who exactly taught me those songs?" She raised her foil and arched an eyebrow. "I don't suppose you're here to indulge me."

Of all of them, Drosida had taken most aptly to existence as an idle aristocrat, spending her days watching her shadow and arranging her skirts and basking in the sun, and Hadrian often found himself envying her. She made it look easy - she always had. Trajan had said when they were young that Drosida was closer to a chameleon than the flower for which she was named; certainly, their Drosida never tried to put down roots.

"I'm going," Hadrian said, putting his hands in his pockets. "To take that as a _yes_ to my next question."

Drosida pursed her lips. "Seems like cheating."

"You heard."

She shrugged, testing the sharp tip of her sword with the edge of her fingernail, watching her cousin with a jackal's gaze. "Difficult not to. You know that my father is utterly insane, yes? You are too, for agreeing to it..."

"It was my idea."

She shrugged. "Doesn't change a thing. You're both lunatics. Although I should probably have guessed as much before now."

The foil slashed through the air again, a silver blur, and Hadrian felt suddenly very glad that Drosida was not being placed in charge of her own Selection. This palace had seen enough bloodshed.

"We need to unite the nation," he said. It sounded a little weak, even to his own ears. "Show them who we are..."

"It legitimises you," Drosida said, nodding. "Following in your father's footsteps. Showing you are truly a Schreave. I get it. I think you're a fool, and so is Father for even contemplating the prospect, but I get it."

"It'll be risky," Hadrian said. To open their gates to the world while they were still unsteady... Despite Trajan's words twelve months earlier, many of the rogues who had escaped their destiny at the palace on that fateful night had never resurfaced - among them the False King. They were still out there, somewhere. And they would not go quietly into the night. Hadrian had wanted to move against them instantly, but Trajan had counselled him first cool his blood and consider his next move with caution.

"Thirty five girls," Drosida mused. "My, but you are a fool, cousin. Would you prefer I put you out of your misery now?" Her foil wavered in the golden afternoon air, and she mimed the slitting of a throat with considerable drama.

Hadrian almost laughed. He had almost laughed many times in the days and weeks and months that had followed his homecoming, but he had never quite managed to complete the sounds.

Could you call it that, a homecoming? Even if this was not a home? Trajan thought him intransigent. There was no need for his uncle to tell him so - it was more than evident.

Perhaps that was why Trajan had agreed so readily to this idea of the Selection. Perhaps he hoped that it would give Hadrian a reason to stay, a reason to make his home here, and a motive to put his mind towards matters of kingship and diplomacy and politics.

He shouldn't waste that finite hope of his. The scar over Hadrien's heart reminded him of that lesson he had learned, many years ago. What was love but a disease of the blood?

"The Report airs tonight," he told his cousin in no uncertain terms, his tone firm, and then he turned on his heel and walked back with a straight back towards the half-ruin of the ancient castle, leaving the gold-haired girl to fence her shadow behind him, and black clouds gathering in the crystalline sky above.

Let tomorrow be kinder.


	2. Chapter 2

What an awful thing that was.

The bangbangbangbangbangbang of Caster Wu's rifle from somewhere behind the stable, near the firing range the guards maintained to keep sharp and honed their skills of warfare reminded Hadrian of the brutality they had faced in breaching the walls of the palace, and he was glad indeed when the head guard's sound fell silent, perhaps for a change of clip or a weapon substitution.

"Look," Drosida said, dropping as lightly as a dancer into the space next to Hadrian and breaking him from his tangled web of thought with a single wave of her long fingers, dripping with gems and brass rings. She held a yellow manila folder to her silk-encrusted chest; her eyes were smiling and her smile was conspiratorial. "I managed..."

Hadrian raised a hand to quiet his cousin, and thankfully she was amenable, dropping silent with a curious expression - after a moment of nothingness, of utterly soundless sound, Hadrian nodded to Drosida to continue and she did, eyebrow cocked curiously.

"Some of the girls they've chosen," she said, and handed him the file. "Father wanted me to show you."

There was a figure standing a little distance away, tall and narrow against the high tangled bushes of the orchard in which Hadrian had lost himself for the day. Drosida's bodyguard was good at her job, at being noticed only when she wished to be. It was a skill that Hadrian's guard matched equally, indeed, he knew not where the former rebel was currently positioned - only that if any threat presented itself, it would be dispatched in the same second that it came into being. What an awful thing that was, that utter confidence Hadrian had in the former rebel's skill and penchant for abrupt, devastating violence. What an awful thing that was.

The young man held the file, but did not open it, laying it carefully onto his lap and returned his gaze to the rose bush opposite the stone bench upon which the two cousins perched. "I didn't think I was meant to glimpse them for another few fortnights." He looked at his cousin. "What happened to a random selection?"

"Don't act obtuse," Drosida said lightly, tapping one lacquered nail against the thick paper of the file. "You aren't so naive. As though Father would allow a randomly selected girl within a mile of his precious Hadrian."

"I'm not going to look at it."

"You should," Drosida said. "You should. You'll need to be decisive, cousin, and that may mean making some decisions sooner rather than later. Why slow yourself down?"

He handed it back to her. "I trust your judgement," he said irritably. "By all means, look through them to your heart's content."

"You're sabotaging yourself."

"I'll survive."

She rolled her eyes, but smiled with that same reluctant affection she always possessed when it came to Hadrian and his obtuse streak. "Oh," she said. "What a king you shall make indeed."

She arranged her skirts and she rose; her perfectly coiled hair barely stirred as she moved, elegantly pinned into a complex matrix of golden braids, scattered with small, pale, pastel flowers. Her bodyguard moved with her, a shadow who was not a shadow.

" _Saw that dark cloud coming from a million miles away, and oh, how I've dreaded this God forsaken day. Mama's been crying in the kitchen, sister's been afraid of the dark and, me, I've been gathering the pieces of all these shattered hearts_."

No sooner had she moved out of sight than another of Drosida's rebel songs rose over the treetops, sweet and piercing, competing with the resurrected bangbangbangbangbangbang of the shotgun as the two sounds crescendoed towards the pale sky.

" _Father, can you hear the devil drawing near? Like a bullet from a gun, run, father, run._ "

 **ONE MONTH LATER**

"Chuy," Wu was saying. A narrow-shouldered man with a buzz cut and a face like a motorcycle accident and a slender woman with very dark hair and very dark eyes. "And Semperonii."

His uncle's voice, cool and commanding. "Let them in."

Trajan sat comfortable in the throne. That had bothered Hadrian a little at first, the thought that his uncle had not even the decency to seem uneasy in another man's crown, wielding his nephew's power, speaking with his brother's voice, but it had never bothered him enough to speak his poisonous thoughts to any but Drosida, who had pointed out the obvious: "Have you ever seen Father uncomfortable?"

No. Hadrian didn't think he had. Trajan had never allowed his composure to slip in all the years he had cared and protected the boy king, in all the years they had fled rebel attacks or struggled to rally divergent royalist groups to their cause, in all the years Hadrian had known him. Every situation seemed placed within his comfort zone, every new problem handled with the same ease and aplomb. A skill to be imitated, perhaps, rather than resented.

Hadrian did not turn from the window as the footsteps traversed the wide space. He was watching the colourful rooftops of Angeles, all shiny chrome and hurricane lily tiles and robin egg slates, fade quietly to grey beneath the falling sun. He cut a lonely figure, silhouetted against the wide pane of glass that took up the entire eastern wall of the hall, and so still that one might easily mistake him for lost within his own thoughts. Nonetheless, he listened with rapt attention to the proceedings behind him as Trajan greeted the two most trusted bodyguards of the royal staff - the two who had proven themselves most capable during the lengthy guerilla siege on the Angeles castle and in the long year succeeding their victory. Vran Semperonii was wearing boots, military issue, his steps more muffled than the impatient clipped tone of Estelle Chuy's high heels; they stopped short of the throne, and Hadrian angled himself to catch a glimpse of Chuy's perfect curtesy just as she rose out of it again.

Trajan wanted to brief them on the security proceedings for the rapidly approaching Selection. Chuy's role would be a small one - with any luck, her charge could be kept quite apart from the girls until much later in the competition. Hadrian wasn't certain what Drosida might do given the opportunity, but the possibilities appeared veritably endless at this stage.

But Vran would have to exist at Hadrian's shoulder for the next few months, lest an unexpected weakness around the competition's defences provide the frailty the rebels needed to deliver some fatal blow to Hadrian himself. The man would not complain, but Hadrian nonetheless hoped he would not find the experience too tedious. Thirty five girls meant that there would probably be a lot of dry, uninteresting dates while the foundations were laid for more or for much, much less - and Vran had never quite struck Hadrian as the romantic sort.

The Report would be aired tomorrow - the drawing of the names, the revelation of the girls and their faces and their names. How strange to think she dwelled somewhere out there, within the city, completely unaware of what was to come - living a distinct life, with all of it's defined edges, a girl he would have to raise first to lady and then to wife and then, most finally of all, to queen.

What an awful thing that was to do to a girl.

"Remember," Trajan was saying. "I am trusting you with the two things most precious to me in all the world: my daughter." He caught Hadrian's eye as the younger man moved his gaze from the sky to the throne, and did not smile. "And my king."

What an awful thing that was.


End file.
